


Looking for stars without a telescope

by chocolatemilk2



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, Pretentious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 13:27:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chocolatemilk2/pseuds/chocolatemilk2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q: What makes a scientist? (A: his peppy radio assistant)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looking for stars without a telescope

Carlos inhales an oily, greasy pizza inflamed with summer heat and shimmering desert air. He tears a hand wipe packet open with his teeth as he fumbles for change and hurries out the door.

It is a waxing-moon Tuesday, and sidewalk cracks cause papercuts on waxing-moon Tuesdays. So Carlos wheels a rental bike onto the road instead, and watches dust pick up sand clouds in wooshes as he pedals.

He's in that space between science projects at the moment, in the lazy, lethargic, listless laxness. He needs some stars to fill up the void in his mind but all he sees are afternoon stormclouds. His apartment is its usual frigid self.

Night Vale television is an unnerving cross between Amish-esque technophobia, and futuristic holiographics. Carlos wishes he were joking. What's he meant to make of a spotty black and white recording of someone swaying side to side, three minutes of dead air, and then a Strex Corp mascot projection dancing on his elbow? Barn dancing, no less?

Strex Corp has been cancelling some of his scientific outings lately, and city council said on the radio that they are "definitely in control of everything, in case anyone was wondering, but not in control of your entire lives or anything past our diplomatic juristiction such as but not limited to bees." Carlos didn't vote for Mcdaniels but he got in somehow and he's holding a mandatory public rally tomorrow. Carlos wonders if Tamika Flynn will be there. Maybe he can get a tissue sample on that claw.

Carlos fluffs up his pillow (it squawks in protest) and falls asleep listening to the drone of desert wasps. He reflects he was in such a hurry to get back to his cool apartment block and then didn't leave the freezer door open like he planned.

When Carlos awakens it's tomorrow, and he's slept for 14 hours. His clothes are all rumpled and he has a crick in his neck from the couch. Carlos doesn't bother ironing a new outfit and shlucks his lab coat on as he looks for his ipad. It got charged in the night, but was beneath the kitchen sink, where Carlos definitely didn't leave it. He tucks a flask in his breast pocket and locks the front door. There is enough time to enact the double locking Ritual, but Carlos stuffs it up and the entire lower floor turns into a black hole. 

All his furniture and experiments are sucked into the hole, which should be pulling him in but is curiously invisibly walled at waist level. Carlos thinks he hears a gasp from the facless old woman.  He isn't sure what to do about his stove, which is on fire, and leaking blue lighter fluid. Carlos pats the mini bookshelf back to the wall with a airborn dishcloth and holds his nose.

One of the police in the bushes outside clears his throat meaningfully, pen lid tapping anxiously against the cement. The public rally! Stupid Carlos, keeping a police officer. But his house...

Carlos sighs and shut the front door to his apartment, striding towards the town centre. Hopefully the rally won't be too long and he can get home in time to save the mini fridge and investigate the sand waste sculptures that mysteriously appeared on his calander.

A person is standing on a podium in City Hall, who he doesn't recognise. "Joseph Fink," hisses the old angel-adoptee lady. It doesn't ring a bell.

One of Mcdaniel's heads is belching fuschia smoke. You wonder whether it's a traditional speech opening or if the rally has come to blows? City politics is bewildering.

Mr. Fink taps the microphone, similing brillinatly at no one as he shuffles his notes. "Strex corp's new assigned pairing scheme will bring love and hapiness to everyone. It will lend much needed arrangement to the romantic lives of many people, minor entities and reptiles. Love to everyone, whether you like it or not, love for everyone like them or not, really you do like it, like it or not, because we know it. And we hope this is the best thing for you. But mostly us. Strexcorp: Love and hapiness!"

"Ugh," says Big Rico's adoptive son, Little Rico. "Excuse me while I go cry."

All that fast food is havocing his nervous system, Carlos theorizes.

The rest of the rally is actually a car rally, where all public attendees are given a dune buggy and a satalite dish. "Don't get lost, you'll eat your children!"

Carlos has no time to wonder whether the family cannibalism is a repercussion or an inevitability because they're off.

He won't lie, he's never actually ridden a dune buggy, and this one is filled with empty Dr. Pepper cans. He comes last, he thinks, because he is too busy examining the sticky residue at the bottom of the cans to drive straight. He assures himself that a death sentence for last place would be absolutely ridiculous.

His sentence is "take this ticket, it's the last one in the hat."

The ticket reads /Cecil, the Voice of Night Vale/.

Carlos swallows, but his mouth has already run dry, and his palms have already started sweating, like whole notes to the quivering quavering of his heart.

When he gets home there's no void left in his apartment floor, just plenty of raindrops.

 

Carlos is so nervous he nearly misses his date. He considers ditching it for a moment, but then he thinks of politics and Strexcorp, and his research project. He certainly doesn't think of the look on Cecil's face while being stood up.

He wonders what possesed Cecil to think of the Whispering Forest as a good idea for a date. Waiting beneath spiky branches is pokey and he doesn't want to become a tree.

"I am a scientist, not a tree," Carlos chants under his breath, batting away the twigs that come creeping around his wrists.

A leaf flutters down and settles on his nose. It has curved, calliographic letters carved into it. /But imagine if you were a science tree!/ it reads. 

Aren't all trees science trees? Maybe he is a tree, and just doesn't know it? Maybe he isn't a scientist, and is only a guy who likes beakers? They do go ding ding ding. That's very appealing. Especially in conjunction with festive-themed glass swizzle sticks.

Cecil! Cecil will know.

"H-hello," says Carlos, clearing his throat so it comes out a bit curtly.

"Magnificent Carlos. To gaze at your face is to gaze upon a field of dandelions caught alight by a volcano. It's good to see you, I mean. How's the negative volcano research?"

"It-- it turned out to be a double negative in the end, so we neutrelized it. Apocalypse averted. Umm, I try not to think about it really. The knowledge fills me with horror. How're you?"

"Uh huh. Yeah. Oh, I'm great! Happy to be here. Cripes, that sounded weird didn't it. Sorry."

"That's okay, I don't mind. I like it when you're happy." Cecil beams joyfully. "Uh. Not going to lie though, this place gives me the creeps. I would've thought the nonexistent desert lake beside the nonexistent resort would be a good date spot, if it existed."

"Ye-es, I don't think Strexcorp realized it didn't exist when it didn't make the reservation there," Cecil says calmy. "You look wonderful."

"Oh! Yeah, you implied that," Carlos says. Stupid Carlos, stop talking! "You look... Well, I can't see you well in the darkness of the forest, but your silouhette is striking, and I'm sure your outfit choice is dashing. I'm-- uhh. Jealous, in fact. You make everyone else in your presence look like an ugly toad."

"That's not very fair, I've met some lovely pretty toads in my time," Cecil says in an affronted tone. "See look, you've gone and offended Mrs. Coddleswamp. Congrats on the spring cloud, dearie, it's not personal!" He turns to Carlos, smiling. "I adore tadpoles."

This seems like a perfect time to spit it out. Carlos shuffles his feet. "Do I seem like a scientist to you?"

"Whatever do you mean?" says Cecil, who looks confused to why he's asking.

"Well. If you imagined a scientist, and you didn't know me, would you picture me?"

"Most of the Scientists I've met carried dismembering saws. You don't really have their teeth. Can we not with the pretending you don't exist, though, perfection? It's distressing!"

"The perfection, or the pretending?" Carlos asks, For Science.

"Both!" Cecil squeaks, blush tingling his nose pink. 

Carlos smirks, bopping him on the nose. Cecil looks at him, disbelievingly. Then Carlos realizes what he's just done and busies himself rereading the inscribed leaf four times over.

"You know," says Cecil, in a certain tone of voice. "If you wanted to get me alone, you didn't need to set up this whole Strexcorp conspiracy to do it."

"Cecil! I- I didn't!"

Cecil smirks back, and stares at him. A chuckle creeps through Cecil's lips and Carlos huffs indignantly.

"You really think I could've dreamed up a scientist as divine as you on my own?" Cecil asks. It sounds bewildered, or rhetorical, or something.

"That wasn't really the focus in my hypothesis."

Cecil looks devastated.

An awkward silence settles between them. "I like beakers," Carlos blurts. "And I like, mixing concoctions in them, with swizzle sticks. I like the swizzley sound too. That's the best bit."

"Hey," says Cecil quietly. "That's wonderful, isn't it?"

"Really?"

"I think so. I like..." Cecil sits down at a tree stump, and stares into the long swoops of leafy limb. "I like microphone feedback. And when people tap them and say 'Excuse me.' Or when people yawn and look like cats."

"I've never seen that," Carlos says. "The cat part."

"Maybe we should go to a conference together. And see if anyone does it," Cecil suggests obviously. Carlos grins at him, and Cecil winks, then coughs. "As fellow professionals, I mean. Don't take this date under any misconstrusion. Strexcorp may take away our free will, but it'll be back by next Tuesday, probably."

 

They go to the news conference, and Carlos crisply irons his outfit this time, and brushes his teeth extra. Cecil looks breathless to see him. Carlos dismantles the faceless old woman's opposing argument while Cecil supplies insightful commmentary and reply. Carlos feels extremely self-satisfied.

They decide to go to Big Rico's for their slice together after, and people giggle and point when they see them.

Cecil tastes as exotic as the pizza spices, in a charming way. Cecil tries to teach Carlos his radio voice, and Carlos fails hilariously. He takes to monotoning "welcome to night vale," whenever they see each other, and Cecil always looks a bit faint with infatuation.

This is usually the part where Carlos looks into the wide starry night and feels dizzy with all the pinpricks of light.

Cecil takes his hand, and Carlos's thoughts are clear, soothing forest whispers. He remembers the way a place that had felt so terrifying hadn't been.

Carlos's room becomes Cecil's room, and Cecil suggests numerous outlandish science topics for Carlos to look into. "Why didn't you tell me you were stumped earlier?" He asks.

"Curioser and curioser, aren't you?" says Carlos. Cecil throws a pillow at him.

Raindrops fade to morning dew. Storm-clouds to sunlight.

It's like looking for stars in a bright city sky without a telescope. You need a chart, because you don't see how the stars are only constellations waiting to realign to each other again.

That's science.


End file.
